The Dirty Kitchen Timer from Brad Wallace Design is a versatile cooking timer app that can benefit every cook. It's unique graphical interface presents a virtual kitchen which makes setting multiple timers logical and easy. Up to five timers can be set for pots on specific burners of a stove or even in the oven.

General Instructions

Drag a pot from the wall rack to a burner or the oven to create a new timer. Initially, all the drag-able pots are green highlighted. Also, initially, all places where the pots can be dropped are highlighted in red, including the oven.

Countdown Timers

Once a pot is dragged to a burner or into the oven, the timer control panel will appear allowing you to set the time. To create a countdown timer, spin the dials to set a time in hours, minutes, and seconds. Then tap the large green accept button. (Tapping the numbers on the dial will not alter the time. The user must spin the dials to change the time.) The timer will blink red and reset itself if you try to set a countdown of 00:00:00. You must set a countdown time greater than zero.

The red cancel button at the bottom will cancel your timer settings.

You can set timers for all five pots. Just drag more pots from the hanging rack to empty burners or the oven. As a countdown timer progresses from its start point to its endpoint, the pot will change from silver to green to yellow to red. Also, there is a progress bar showing relative progress of the count down in the area surrounding the clock timer for the pot. The bar progresses from left to right and changes color in the same way as the pots.

Count Up Timers

You may instead set a count up timer. A count up timer begins at 0 and counts up. Any changes you have made using the hours, minutes, and seconds dials will be ignored and will be reset to 00:00:00. Tap the large green accept button to start the timer or tap the red cancel button to cancel the changes you have made.

Pause a Timer

Pause a timer by dragging a pot to the countertop or the center plate of the stove. The clock above the pot will dim to indicate that the timer is paused. To unpause a timer, drag it back to a burner.

Change a Timer

Change a timer by tapping on its countdown clock (works only on timers that are not paused). The timer control panel will appear again allowing you to set a new time by spinning the hours, minutes, and seconds dials. To actually change the timer, hit the large green accept button at the bottom of the timer console to confirm the changes. If you hit the red cancel button instead, the timer will be unchanged and will continue its previous count up or countdown.

Sounding Alarms

When a timer is complete, its alarm sounds and the pot flashes red and begins to smoke. It will now count up to show you how much time has elapsed since the alarm initially sounded.

Silence an Alarm

To quickly silence an alarm, simply tap the pot or any pot visible. The pot will continue to flash red and smoke and count up but it will be silenced.

Cancel a Timer

To cancel the timer, move the pot back to the wall rack above the stove.

Other Options

The oven door has four buttons located near the bottom of the app.

Share Button

Tap the share button to bring up the share control panel.

You can rate the app at the app store, give me feedback, or share the app on various social networks. Please help spread the word about this app if you like it! I have put tremendous effort into making this a high quality app. I hope you think so, too. Please consider sending me feedback so that I can improve the app, instead of a bad review. I will try my best to fix the problem. Thanks!

Reset Button

Press this button to cancel all timers at once. The reset control panel will appear.

When you tap the large green accept button, all pots will be returned to the rack and their timers will be canceled. Tap the red button, to cancel the control panel and avoid resetting any timers.

Help Button

This displays a simple help guide.

Start-up Help Button

If the start-up help button is pressed in (the default), the large green help text will appear every time you start up the app. Also, the timer and settings control panels will display help balloons. To get rid of this help text the next time you use the app, just tap this button to pop it out and turn off the start-up help text.

Settings Button

This brings up the settings panel with more options.

Settings Panel

Sponge Button

This will make the dirty kitchen cooking timer into a sparkling clean kitchen for anyone who finds this app too disgusting to touch!

Tap the sponge and presto! The Clean Kitchen Cooking Timer!

Ringtones

There are many ringtones available for your alarms. The default is to have all the alarms for every pot have the same ringtone. If you prefer, each pot can have a different ringtone.

Global Ringtone

Tapping the globe icon will highlight it green (the default). This is the global alarm mode and will make all of the pans use the same ringtone. Spin the dial to choose a global ringtone.

Individual Pan Ringtones

Tapping and highlighting any pan icon, will set the individual alarm mode. In this mode, each pan will play its own ringtone as chosen from the dial. Whatever sound is set for the global alarm will no longer control the sound for each pan. The icons are in the same order and shape as the pans on the wall rack when the app starts up. Going from left-to-right: Stock Pot, Dutch oven, Small Sauce Pan, Sauce Pan, and finally Sauté pan (or frying pan) on the far right. Tap the icon of the pan whose sound you want to set. It will highlight green. Then spin the dial to choose the sound you prefer. Do this for each pan if you like (by first choosing the pan icon, then spinning the dial to set its ringtone). All your settings and changes for each pan will be remembered when you tap the large green accept button at the bottom of the setting panel to accept your changes.

If you leave the global button highlighted, all the pans will use the global alarm shown on the dial. If you leave ANY pan button highlighted, global mode will be off, and now any sounds you dialed in for individual pans will sound when their alarm goes off.

You may also return to global mode, by tapping the globe icon. (You will not lose your individual pan settings but those sounds will not be used until you return to individual alarm audio mode by tapping any of the pan icons.)

Silent Alarm

If you wish to turn off the sound for any alarm, change the dial to “Silent”. In the above image, we see that the global alarm mode is on (see previous topic), so all pans will have a silent ringtone.

Background Alarm Audio

If pressed in (the default), this will allow you to hear your alarm ringtone when this app is in the background or if device is sleeping. Leave this button raised if you don’t want to be annoyed by alarm sounds when this app is in the background. You will still receive a silent notification on-screen.

NOTE: You will not receive audio or visual notifications if notifications for the app are turned off in the Notification Center for your device. iOS 7 defaults to have audio notifications turned OFF when an app is in the background or the device is sleeping! For iOS 7 users, follow these instructions to turn on background notifications:

On Home Screen – Tap the Settings icon

Tap on Notification Center

Tap on Dirty Kitchen (if you do not see it listed try restarting the device)

Tap to turn on/off banner or alert boxes

Slide on/off the Sounds slider to receive background audio

Keep Device Awake

If pressed in (the default), this will prevent the device from sleeping or going into standby mode.

Continuous Alarm Audio

If pressed in (NOT the default), the alarm will loop continuously. If it’s popped out, the alarm will sound for only 1 single pass of its recording (which can be as little as a second or two for alarm sounds or longer for synth song alarms). Keep this popped out if you don’t want to be annoyed by an alarm sounding forever and ever and ever ’til you want to strangle yourself!

Ticking Sound

This button, when pressed in, will make a faint ticking sound whenever a timer is set. (The default is off.) If there are no timers on the stove or in the oven, then there will be no ticking sound. Also, on iOS devices, the ticking sound can only be heard when this app is activated (not sent to the background) and the device is awake.

Cancel Buttons

If you click the red cancel button, all of your settings that you have made while the control panel was open will be lost.

2 Comments

Thanks for the comment Maureen and thanks for finding the solution! Maureen determined that restarting the device caused any apps missing from the notification center to appear after restart. Hmmm. Quirky. I’ll update the docs.